Trust, but verify was good for nuclear disarmament, less good as a parenting tool

Dad thought: "If it was good enough for Reagan..."

By Dad

Ronald Reagan was fond of the Russian proverb, Trust, but verify –  especially for making sure the Soviets fulfilled their nuclear arms-reduction promises.

A classic oxymoron, it means you don't trust the other side at all.

That's perfectly fine when the other side is able to wipe you off the map.

It's inviting trouble when your "adversary" is your 14-year-old daughter and she finds out you've been checking up on her.

I used the proverb as a parenting tool after Dora failed to produce this year's school Fitnessgram.

That's the health report the Department of Education issues to tell parents whether their kids are in shape or not.

Dora said hers “disappeared” from her backpack.

We're talking here of a space where old class papers, empty gum wrappers and even the odd sandwich remain unmolested for eons.

Nothing just "disappears" from Dora's backpack.

I figured the Fitnessgram's absence meant Dora was hiding bad news — that she was unhealthily underweight because of her persistent meal skipping.

It was time to trust, but verify.

First, I boned up on Body Mass Index, which the Fitnessgram uses to state whether a student is over or underweight.

Only math teachers and fitness gurus can ever remember the BMI formula. When I looked it up on (where else?) Wikipedia,* I also learned that the concept has been around since the 1830-1850s.

Here are some other events that occurred during those decades:

• Survival-of-the-fittest naturalist Charles Darwin was on his historic voyage in HMS Beagle

• The Irish were seeing their BMIs plummet because of the Potato Famine

• The United States got a little "fatter" with the annexation of Texas

In other words, it was a long time ago.

Much deeper research (I took the trouble to google "BMI WebMD" this time) revealed BMI's also criticized for giving skewed health-risk readings for people who are:

… very active, very inactive, lean, not lean, big framed, small framed, short, tall, old, sick, ethnically Asian, African American, Native American and Hispanic.

Will anyone left in the United States please stand up?

Despite these flaws, I still couldn't stop myself from asking the DOE to send me a copy of Dora’s Fitnessgram.

When it arrived, I realized I'd verified when I should have quit at trust.

The DOE says kids with BMIs between the fifth and 85th percentiles are of “healthy weight,” and Dora’s was in the 26th percentile.

Dora's BMI: Nothing to Hide

Oops.

On this occasion, I got off lightly.

Dora treated me to an, "I told you so..." when I admitted to her I'd obtained her Fitnessgram, and that it had ruled her healthy.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had been equally gracious at the signing of the 1987 nuclear arms reduction treaty.

After Reagan reminded him that the United States would "trust, but verify," the Communist Party General Secretary quipped with a smile: "You repeat that at every meeting."

Still, historians say Gorbachev was privately incensed by Reagan's approach.

So what's Dora really thinking?


* Always free of charge, research on Wikipedia is also currently free of guilt. Their pesky call for at least a $5 donation "if Wikipedia is useful to you" is just an annual year-end affair. Compare that with Public TV, which makes us feel awkward several times a year and annoyingly interrupts my Friday-night Brit comedies. That said, click here to donate to PopPsychology911.com. Give generously "if PopPsychology911.com is useful to you."

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Fitnessgram Post Script

Dad's logic: If officials say this kid is fat, that means Dora is thin

By Dad (again)

“This kid is fat,” screams the New York Post headline next to a picture of a pencil-thin nine-year-old named Gwendolyn Williams.

Gwendolyn very obviously is not fat, but the Department of Education says she’s “overweight” in her Fitnessgram.

Gwendolyn also told the newspaper the same thing happened to her friend.

Now, you never know with the Post how much of their reporting is entertainment and how much is news.

Check out another of its recent "fat-focused" stories, this one about (admittedly tubby) New York Mets pitcher Bartolo Colon:

Page by larrybrownsports.com

Headline: LARDBALL*

Introduction: Crack about Colon's consumption of peanut butter.

The news: Farther down the story; it seems to have been how Colon led his team to its latest win.

The response: The baseball player's teammates boycotted the article's author, Mike Puma.

But there was no need for Post cuteness in the Gwendolyn piece. Just straight reporting had you shaking your head in disdain at the DOE.

Which in turn meant there were implications for any kid who'd received this year's Fitnessgram.

If DOE is reporting kids to be plumper than they actually are, the kids it's designated as only just healthy would actually be underweight.

In my case, that would be Dora, who's had the appetite of a hibernating squirrel since turning 13.

Or rather, she barely touches her food at home, since I hear that she eats anything put in front of her when she visits her friends' homes.

This is an amazing metamorphosis of her taste buds that, contrary to all known laws of nature, reverses itself when she returns to her own house.

So unless I encourage her to take all her meals at friends' homes, I fear the Gwendolyn piece suggests I'm under rising pressure to find foods that Dora will down at our family mealtimes.

I get a mumbled response when I ask her what she'd like me to buy. Is that the result of diminished energy due to food deprivation, or teenage reticence to answer her dad?

Gladly, Dora’s younger siblings both had Fitnessgrams that showed their BMIs to be well within the “healthy weight” range – even when I apply the “Gwendolyn” adjustment.

* This was the headline of the print edition

OMG I think I might be fat

Weigh to go: Dad's trying to get the girls to eat more

By Dad 

If there’s one thing the girls are not, it’s overweight.

Yet …

• 13-year-old Dora finds any excuse to skip meals.

• 10-year-old Penny complains about having “fat” legs.

• Seven-year-old Cathy hears her sisters blubbering about blubber and wonders whether she has a problem too.

Should I blame the schools, society, Tyra Banks?

While it’s just talk for now with the younger two, Dora has shed pounds she didn’t need to lose.

Denying that she's slimming, she blames her dad for serving “nothing” she likes.

But her favorite foods of one week are "disgusting" the next. Even pizza's off her current consumables list.

I learned this when I presented her with a triple-cheese pizza. I thought it was an offer she couldn't refuse.

She refused.

Who can keep pace with such chameleonic tastes?

All that Dora downs with regularity is the meat of her evening meal.

I say: “Take just a forkful of each of your veggies.” She reacts as if I'm suggesting she ingest strychnine.

With her lost pounds and appetite of an obligate carnivore, Dora could be the face of some meat-only weight-loss plan.

Maybe we’ve got something marketable here.

But I’d rather she identify the foods she likes, and stick to her decision long enough for me to buy and plate them.

For trying to please her palate without a list is like searching for a winning lottery combination – without the hope of landing a multi-million-dollar jackpot.

Complicated

While Dora's sisters are more cooperative at mealtimes, Penny's belief she has fat legs has its complications.

It spawned a new problem after I apparently shocked her to the core with a personal revelation.

As she sat on a park bench and lamented about her "wide" thighs, I explained that I was also 11 when – seated on a wooden chair playing triangle for my school band in England – I thought I had fat legs.

"The flat surface makes your legs spread out," I said. "It doesn't mean they're fat."

Her reaction was swift and blunt.

"You only played the tri-an-gle?" Penny said, exaggerating each of triangle's syllables in a way that expressed pity, disappointment and surprise all in one.

I saw immediately that my credibility was now shot for pressing her to practice her own band instrument – the clarinet.

Anyone adept enough to coordinate blowing and finger wiggling so that tunes sound out could never respect some chump who banged two pieces of metal together.

I should have listened to KISS – not the headbanger band, though at this point I was ready to bang my head on just about anything out of frustration. No, I mean KISS, the Keep-It-Simple-Stupid principle.

By keeping it simple, I'd have told Penny to just stick to sofas, period, when looking for somewhere to sit. And I certainly wouldn't have tried being the sensitive dad with stories about my past.

All of which leaves Cathy and her sister-induced worries. Being only seven, her appetite thankfully still overrides her weight concerns when dinnertime arrives and she's got a favorite dish to get stuck into.

But I'm sure it won't be too long before she's as complicated as the other two.